1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape for fixing a joint portion and to a method of using the same. More particularly, the invention relates to a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape for fixing a joint portion that can alleviate a pain caused in a joint portion of the body of a person due to aging or at the time of exercise when adhered to the joint portion to fix it and to a method of using such a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape.
2. Description of a Related Art
Heretofore, many people have been suffering from a pain on a joint portion of the body such as knee, elbow, or wrist. Since joint portions have much to do with the action of a human, a pain on this portion will often result in difficulty in physical actions in daily life. In particular, the pain in the knee joint will in many cases cause dysbasia (trouble in walking) to have the patient bedridden, thus giving rise to serious problems not only physically but also mentally to the patient. Various factors are involved in the mechanism of generating a pain in a joint portion. The factors include, for example, deformation and wearout of joint cartilage. In the advancement of these are involved a decrease in muscle force of the muscle around the joint portion due to aging, over-use of the muscle, obesity and so forth, which give a great influence particularly on the knee joints, which generally tend to be under load of the body weight. As described above, the pain on the knee join is a serious problem and as will be clear from the situation in which advancement of aging society in recent years, excessive exercise by health-oriented people, and an increase in the number of obese persons due to change of food life are observed, there is a trend toward increasing population of those with a pain on the knee joint or joints. For this reason, a countermeasure for the pain on the knee joint has been keenly demanded and various studies are now being made on the method of treating it.
Methods that have been used to alleviate such a pain on the joint portion include various methods, for example, pharmacotherapy such as oral administration of analgesic, muscle relaxant and the like and local injection, physical therapy, which achieves resolution and pain killing by means of laser beam, interfering wave, microwave or the like, surgical therapy such as osteotomy or artificial joint whole replacement operation and so forth. As another approach, a method of fixing a joint portion to alleviate the pain thereon has been known. The method of fixing a joint portion uses a special-purpose pressure-sensitive adhesive tape, which is easily available from a pharmacy, for example, so that it is an effective means for alleviating a pain on a joint portion at low cost and in an easy-to-use manner as compared with other methods including the above-mentioned pharmacotherapy, visiting a hospital, operation and the like. Further, a method of winding a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape around a joint portion or ligament to support, reinforce or press the site is useful in preventing disorders or as first aid when playing sports (hereinafter, “taping” is defined as a method of fixing a joint portion by using a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape). However, most people have no expert knowledge on taping and if they have got knowledge by referring to textbooks it is difficult to get the skill. Under present circumstances, people have to visit an osteophatic clinic to ask taping by an expert trainer. However, it is time-consuming and cumbersome for a person having an injured joint portion to take trouble to visit a clinic such as an osteophatic clinic.
If taping is practiced by a laymen, use of commercially available pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes may always be attended with a discomfort since generally such pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes have an adhesive applied to all over the surfaces thereof and give a sense of incompatibility at the internal site of the joint where it is highly sensitive to stimulation. In addition, since the adhesive layer contacts the internal site of the joint where spontaneous perspiration occurs most frequently so that a problem arises that the surface of the skin at this site will get stuffy and skin irritation occurs.
In consideration of the above-mentioned problems of conventional pressure-sensitive sheets for taping, an object of the present invention is to provide a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape for fixing a joint portion which is easy to operate by a person having no expert knowledge on taping and when applied to a target site causes no sense of incompatibility at the internal site of the joint and an reduce significantly skin irritation due to getting stuffy or the like. Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of using such a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape for fixing a joint portion.